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Jay Bernstein
10-31-2010, 02:00 PM
taken this morning at Botanical Gardens here in Seminole, FL
Tamron 180mm 3.5 Macro Lens
F5.0
ISO 100
1/1250/sec
I did not use PSE on this image except to put my name on the photo.
Any suggestions to improve?
Thanks
Jay

Chris Ober
10-31-2010, 02:43 PM
Lovely, bright colors here and the clean background separates everything nicely. Would like to see more DOF to get the front legs sharper. Maybe a little bit higher angle so you don't have the shadowed underside too visible or add a little bit of fill light.

Leon Robinson Jr.
10-31-2010, 07:09 PM
I like the composition on this. The shadowa don't bother me, but I agree a little more DOF would of brought more in focus.

Ken Childs
11-01-2010, 02:54 AM
Hey Jay, you did well at capturing some of the great colors of this Lubber and the BG looks great! The DOF is very shallow because you shot at f5. It looks like you had a lot of room to work with on camera settings (what camera are you using?) so you could have upped the ISO and gone to f16 and probably still would have had a relatively fast SS. Adult Lubbers are big grasshoppers so you'll need that higher f# to get most of it in focus. If possible, a higher angle would have been nice and would have kept less of the bug from being blocked by the blades of grass. Using some fill-flash would have helped to keep the shadows to a minimum.
You generally want the eye of the subject to be close to one of the ROT positions and cropping a small amount from the right and a bigger slice from the top can make that happen. Be sure you don't clip the foot. Some of the light areas in the front half of the 'hopper are just a bit too bright and should be toned down. Curves, levels, SH can all accomplish this so experiment to find which one works best for you. Sometimes when you tone down these bright areas they end up looking somewhat flat and a little boost in contrast can help that.

That vertical piece of grass is problematic, at least IMHO it is. If you get another shot at one of these, they're usually pretty docile so you may be able to pose it where you want it. :)

Jay Bernstein
11-01-2010, 12:54 PM
Ken
Thank you very much for your direction. I will give it another shot. I am using a Canon Rebel xti, and will probably trade up to a 7D at some point. I do have the settings available to me though. You were right about the docile part.. I must have ran off 25 shots of him and posted what I felt was the best of the lot.
Thanks again for all your help.
jay

Steve Maxson
11-01-2010, 02:41 PM
Hi Jay. Sounds like you had fun working with this colorful guy. Ken has a lot of good suggestions for you to consider so I won't repeat those. I like the clean background, though my preference would be for it to be a little brighter. Also, to my eye, the sharpest parts of the hopper are the wings and abdomen. Ideally, you would want the head and eye to be sharpest. I think some selective sharpening on the front half of the hopper would be effective in this case. Keep working at it - it does get easier. :)